Classical Music

• A study performed by Christine Philips of Wichita State University pitted classical music against punk and no music in order to determine which music produced the best results for a set of test-takers. They also wanted to see which music produced more off-topic comments from test-takers. Participants were paired up randomly and communicated with each other anonymously through a computer connection. The test instructions asked the test-taking pairs to communicate with each other to collectively rank the order of importance of 15 items for survival on the moon. The test-takers' goal was to reproduce the closest ranking to NASA's ranking. The classical music group performed with the most accuracy on both the timed and untimed tests. This result appears to support the idea that classical music improves concentration, but the classical music groups still had an average of three to four off-topic comments in their dialogue on the timed and untimed tests. The no music group only recorded one to two off-topic comments during the test. The researchers concluded that the off-topic comments reflected harmonious collaboration and that, overall, classical music is better for concentration and collaboration than no music.
  
  

Punk Music

• Christine Philips' study also looked into the effects of punk music in the same scenario. The punk music group scored slightly better than the no music group on both the timed and untimed tests but scored worse than both classical music and no music on off-topic comments. The punk groups averaged five off-topic comments on the timed test and over six on average on the untimed test. However, these "off-topic comments" were generally emoticons and jokes, arguably done to aid collaboration on the task. This indicates that punk music is worse for concentration than classical, but still better than having no music at all.
  
  

Hip Hop

• Mignon Wilkins of Missouri Western State University performed a study on the effects of hip hop music on the scores achieved on the game "Monkey Ball." The original game music was pitted against no music and hip hop music to determine which produced the highest score. The researcher wanted to test the relationship between the music and the level of intensity, or concentration, with which the player played the game. No significant difference was found between performance with music and without. The researchers even suggested that hip hop could have been a distraction, but they acknowledge that it was a difficult thing to test for and that further testing would require changes to the test parameters. They also suggest using people's preferred genre of music in future tests, rather than a pre-selected one.
  
  

Baroque

• Maya Ruvinshteyn and Leonard Parrino of Essex County College performed a three-year study on the effects of baroque music on a class's enjoyment and its perception of the difficulty of the mathematics they were studying. One group listened to baroque music during the first month of class, and the other group listened to no music. The baroque music group was more likely to enjoy the class and less likely to find the class challenging. They also got better grades. The researchers believe that the average beats-per-minute of baroque music (between 50 and 60) is responsible for this increased ability.